


Awake My Soul

by Shayvaalski



Series: Outsong [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Implied Relationships, M/M, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-25
Updated: 2012-02-25
Packaged: 2017-10-31 17:46:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/346759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shayvaalski/pseuds/Shayvaalski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Sebastian, a year or so after meeting; rugby and robbers and tea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Awake My Soul

_how fickle my heart and how woozy my eyes  
i struggle to find any truth in your lies  
_ _and now my heart stumbles on things I don't know  
_ _my weakness I feel I must finally show_

 

_  
_

"When I said you should come to a match sometime, I meant to play, Sebastian, not sit and watch."

Seb--who is warm and dry and clean where John is soaking wet and streaked with cold mud--puts up a blond eyebrow and hands John coffee in a paper cup. Their fingers do not brush; outside the flat they are just mates, if even that. (Inside the flat too, thinks John firmly, watching the way the barely-visible scar on Sebastian's cheek pulls when he smiles. Because nothing is happening.) 

He wraps his hands around the cup as Seb says, "The fuck made you think I'd want to play?" It took John months to get used to the casual way Sebastian swears, a kind of verbal punctuation, the way it didn't mean he was angry or upset, but now he hardly hears it.

They are walking home, through the park, not exactly side by side but definitely together. John looks Sebastian up and down and rolls his eyes. "Oh, come off it. Skip the chance to rough someone up? That's unlike you."

The other man sips his own coffee (very sweet, John knows, and very black) and gives John a look over the rim that says, Don't be stupid. He's wearing a scarf looped neatly around his neck, and a nice jacket, and they look, John thinks for the fifteenth time that week, rather unfortunately like a nice gay couple. 

"I prefer to do my violence from a distance. Jim took care of the close work. He liked it better." As always during the days, Sebastian's voice when he talks about Moriarty is totally neutral, his face completely without emotion. "And it's not like I was the only one sitting out, Johnny."

This is true, but that was the worst of it; Sebastian had spent the whole match chatting, apparently quite happily, with those girlfriends of John's teammates who always showed up to watch. Greg's eyebrows had all but hit his hairline, and none of them had said anything about it except Alec, who clapped him on the shoulder and mouthed  _Good on ya, mate_  while they stood on the sidelines getting their breath back at the half. Alec, whose boyfriend was continually the odd one out among the girls.

Sebastian snorts into his coffee, reading John almost as easily as Sherlock had. Five years, he'd said one night in the darkness, five years of needing to be able to look at Jim and instantly tell whether he was about to laugh or draw a knife--does wonders for your observational skills, Johnny-boy. Ordinary people are easy, compared to that. 

They are about halfway home, and it's beginning to get dark. John wraps his fingers around the paper cup and watches Sebastian take out a cigarette and light it; he's the only person John knows to use real matches, from a small inlaid matchbox that he keeps hidden in the palm of one strong, delicate hand.

He looks away. "Those things will kill you."

"So you've said." Sebastian no longer tells John, casually, that he has nothing left to live for since Moriarty shot himself, but it's implicit in almost everything he does. There is nothing driving him, nothing he particularly looks forward to or dreads. (John does, and there are days he feels almost guilty about the fact that he is pleased Sarah is willing to go out with him again, that on Friday nights he gets together with Molly and Greg and they tell stories about Sherlock and it hardly ever hurts, these days.) 

Sebastian breathes out, a thin and careful steam of smoke, and tosses his empty cup into the nearest bin. From the park it's only a few streets to the flat, and they walk the rest of it in silence, Sebastian handing over the keys he'd been holding during the match as they come up the front steps. He doesn't even have his own set; it's been a year and they still seem to be pretending that this is a temporary arrangement, and Sebastian still officially sleeps on the couch-- _just until he can get back on his feet_ , John says, and doesn't quite meet anyone's eyes. He unlocks the door, steps inside.

Seb's hand is on John's shoulder with a grip like iron, forcing him down, his voice quiet and unruffled. "Get down, Johnny."

"What are you--"

_"Down."_  And Sebastian is stepping in front of him, hands suddenly full of the walking stick John still keeps in the front hall (just in case, but his limp seems to be going, and he's glad), and every line of his body is entirely alert and ready.

He's still so used to protecting Moriarty, John thinks, and it's a hard idea to get used to, that the man who has destroyed so much wouldn't have the sense to stay back, stay down, stay quiet. Seb puts himself in harm's way like a man in love, and until John moves to stand just behind his shoulder, wielding his old cane like a club, he seems to have forgotten John was a soldier too. 

"What is it?" he asks, pitched so only the other man can hear.

Sebastian looks at him sideways, but doesn't order him down again. "Clean out your fuckin' ears and listen." 

And then John hears, and curses too. There are footsteps in the flat above them, and their door is just a touch ajar. Eighteen months of living with Sherlock means that John knows the step of everyone who had occasion to visit them--the careful pace that was Mycroft, Mrs. Hudson almost birdlike, even Lestrade and Irene and of course the moving sound of every mood Sherlock ever had, and this is no one he knows. He glances at Seb, raises his eyebrows; the other man shakes his head. No one either of them knows.

Sebastian lays a finger to his lips, gestures up the stairs. John lifts his chin just the tiniest bit, and together they go up, keeping to either side of the staircase, feet soft against the carpet. 

It is like being back in Afghanistan. He can see, finally, the man Sebastian must have been before he met Moriarty, the self-assured and unconscious way he takes control of the situation, directing John with the hand signals of an squad leader, Colonel Moran, who kept his men safe and brought them out of danger even if he had to disobey orders to do it. There is nothing in him of the Seb who sets the table every morning for a man years-dead and stands over John sleepily to make sure he eats before he touches his own food. 

Sebastian's hand flat against his chest stops him; they are at the top of the stairs, listening hard. After a moment Seb nods, and says with a few familiar motions, Me first. Follow after immediately. Do not hold fire. John jerks his chin upward in agreement, and Sebastian slams the door open and charges through it, coiled rage and pain finding outlet at last.

Two men John has never seen before look up as Seb, silent as a hunting tiger, barrels in with the heavy stick raised to strike. They had been in the middle of disconnecting the television; one is holding John's laptop, and Sebastian laughs and keeps laughing as he brings the pole down hard against his collarbone. 

John cannons into the second man, not even bothering with the cane, and they both go crashing into the floor. He hasn't had a reason to fight with anyone since Sherlock died, not like this, body to body, fist against cheekbone, rolling into chair legs and the corner of the fireplace; he remembers coming home to find an American tied up and bleeding in his flat, and he adds that anger to his anger now, drives an elbow up into the man's throat. Somewhere close by Sebastian roars, then laughs again, and then he is reaching down and hauling the choking burglar up and off of John and flinging him, hard, into a wall. 

Silence, and John sits up. Seb is bleeding from the mouth, grinning, his blond hair (gone a little shaggy these days; John is sure Moriarty was the one who had it cut) a lions-mane mess and his jacket missing buttons. He is not quite laughing anymore but John can see it bubbling away around the edges of him, a brutal, intense  _aliveness_  that is slowly fading, leaving Sebastian like the tide leaving the Thames.

("I'm not going to fuckin' kill myself, Johnny, don't be such a bloody tit." Sebastian, late at night, naked to the waist, incongruous against the softness of the pillows; he is at his most candid in the dark, when John cannot find his gaze to meet it. One hand cradles the back of John's head, the other rests on his belly, lines of muscle clear beneath the just-spread fingers. Nothing has happened, and nothing will.)

John takes Seb's outstretched hand, pulls himself up by it. They stand for a moment, shoulder against shoulder, steadying themselves, and then John indicates his own mouth and says, "You should let me look at that."

Sebastian licks his lips, makes a sort of hum in the back of his throat. "Nah. Leave it." And he moves away. "Haven't tasted my own blood for going on two years now. I miss it." Unspoken, always: miss  _him_. "Come on, Johnny. Best clean up."

They don't call the police. Sebastian waits for the men to come to, and then he grabs them both by the collar and begins to talk in a low voice, and when John hears the name _Moriarty_  he goes into the other room and starts making tea. Five minutes later Seb joins him, and gently, wordlessly, removes the cups from his hands, because Sebastian has some very clear and oft-stated opinions about John's inability to correctly steep leaves in hot water.

"You're a mess," says Seb, quietly, eyes on his watch and mind somewhere else entirely. "Go wash up, boss."

They both hear it. Sebastian does not look away from the second hand, but his eyes close for an instant and John reads  _shit_  in every line of his face and each angle of his shoulders. John thinks of the last time Seb slipped, the look of his back as he walked out the door, the flat so empty he had to go stay with Harry for a week, and then he lays square fingers, very gently, against the nape of Sebastian's neck. 

It never happened.

**Author's Note:**

> The title and lyrics quoted are taken from Mumford and Son's song "Awake My Soul".


End file.
